Science: Rise of the machines right around the corner

This week, we’re taking a look at man’s best friend and potentially deadliest enemy: The robot.

It seems that advances in robotics are reported almost daily, in everything from precision motor control to the rise of nanomachines that could one day be the primary drivers of medicine. It’s like living in the foreword to an Isaac Asimov novel — we are maybe one generation removed from the coolest period in American history, and nowhere is that more evident than in the realm of prosthetics.

Researchers at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago in Illinois recently published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine describing how a 32-year-old man who lost his lower leg in 2009 is now able to control a prosthetic leg — including joints in the knee and ankle — thanks to repurposed nerves in his stump.

The nerves that triggered movement in his lower leg were rewired to contract muscles in his thigh through a surgery called targeted muscle reinnervation. The prosthetic was then fitted with sensors that respond to the electrical pulses emanating from contractions in the nerves and remaining thigh muscles.

The result was the first prosthetic leg that essentially “reads” the thoughts of its user and responds accordingly. As the wearer walks, goes up stairs or crosses his legs, his brain tells the leg nerves to contract in a certain manner, which is then translated to the prosthetic. The moving parts of the leg respond in an eerie approximation of a human limb.

While it was the first time the technology has been applied below the waist, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland have been working on a similar construct for the human arm using the same method — with even more mind-blowing results.

The Modular Prosthetic Limb features 26 separate joints powered by 17 motors and 100 sensors working from an onboard computer hidden in a wonderfully dexterous hand that looks like it would be at home in a Star Wars flick.

In a piece on CNN, lead researcher Michael McLoughlin likened the prosthetic’s responses to a musical chord made up of multiple notes — a complex arrangement of movements all taking place together. Johnny Matheney, who lost his left arm to cancer five years ago, said he doesn’t even have to think about it. He reaches for a fork and the hand just moves where he puts it, the fingers grasping the utensil in almost the same way his old limb did.

Researchers from the University of Hong Kong meanwhile claim to have developed a prototype nanomachine capable of delivering drugs directly to sites inside the body, which could one day replace the need for risky surgeries.

According to a report in the South China Morning Post, these “microbots” measure just 100 microns long by 40 microns wide. Zhang Li, Chinese University’s assistant professor for mechanical engineering, said the bots can be directed using an electromagnetic field and could be deployed through an injection to delicate areas like the brain or eye.

It will likely be decades before they are ready to be injected into humans, however. Should they get lost or go rogue, a fleet of nanomachines full of drugs could wreak havoc on your central nervous system. But testing on mice and rabbits has reportedly produced promising results in the bots’ ability to interact with liver cells, so it appears progress toward a dystopian, “Elysium”-like future marches on.

Speaking of livers and robots, there is apparently a bartending bot named James who is helping researchers understand the science of body language. According to a report published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, scientists at Bielefeld University studied more than 100 attempts to order drinks at nightclubs and assessed the behaviors customers displayed shortly before being served.

Bellying squarely up to the bar and looking straight ahead apparently works extremely well, with a 95 percent success rate. Looking at the bartender was successful 86 percent of the time and leaning on the bar also seemed to work, but chatting with friends, studying a menu or squeezing between other patrons reportedly had little success.

The results will be fed into James’ programming so that he can better read whether customers are ready to order a drink. The applications obviously don’t stop there, as improved artificial intelligence of any sort will help usher in the blissful period of robotic slaves performing menial tasks right up until the Great Robot Uprising of 2112.

But not all robots are anthropomorphic, of course. Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, for instance, have reportedly developed cube-shaped bots called M-Blocks that can snap together into a variety of programmable shapes using magnets.

The M-Blocks can move autonomously thanks to an internal flywheel spinning at 20,000 revolutions per minute, which allows them to jump around freely when the brakes are applied. The magnets, meanwhile, allow the M-Blocks to slide over each other and lock into place on any of the cube’s surfaces.

M-Blocks are being hailed as a breakthrough because they represent a game-changer in configurable robotics. One need think no further than a collapsing mine, damaged plane wing or irradiated nuclear plant to see the huge potential a swarm of such robots could have.

Now combine the idea with Zhang Li’s microbots. If the first words that popped into your mind were “knives and stabbing weapons” in the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger, then congratulations! You’ve just figured out how that whole Robot Uprising thing is gonna go down.

Alex Rose covers the Delaware County Courthouse for the Daily Times. Follow him on Twitter at @arosedelco. Check out his blog at delcoscience.blogspot.com. Email him at delcoscience@gmail.com. His column appears every Tuesday.